International Journal of Trade, Economics and Finance, Vol. 6, No. 4, August 2015
The Effects of Leadership Styles on Employee Motivation
in Auditing Companies in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
Mai Ngoc Khuong and Dang Thuy Hoang

their operation, procedure in order to provide sufficient
information to government agencies, investment partners, and
customers, etc. Because of positive change in economic
policies of Vietnam, multilateral investments come from not
only domestic but also overseas investors. When foreign
investors intend to invest, their first necessary demanding is a
financial statement audit confirmation of the enterprises. In
addition, administrators and other managers in company also
need truthful information on the financial disclosure table to
take decisions at every stage of management, directing and
managing the business operations. Consequently, for any
different types of economies, auditing becomes as an
indispensable needs. However, in Viet Nam in general and
especially in Ho Chi Minh City, auditing industry and
auditing firms are considered relatively young in both
quantity and quality. There are only about 165 auditing firms
compared to the needs of thousands business that require
auditing service annually for their companies. The large
difference in the quality of services among audit firms led to
the common ground of this service is not high. Nearly 1.500
people were certified auditors mainly concentrated in the
large audit firms; in 2012, there were only 20 firms in
Vietnam belong to the international audit firms [3]. Thus, this
research aim at 1) finding out criteria of leadership styles that
would be suitable for auditor working in HCMC, 2)
identifying important leadership styles that have the most
influence to employee motivation, 3) recommending
improving and developing suggestions for leaders to better off
its field based on the results and findings of the research.
Abstract—This research chose auditing field as a case study to
investigate and evaluate the overall leadership styles effects on
employee motivation. The research applied quantitative method
with a sample size of 320 respondents - auditors working in Ho
Chi Minh City. The independent variables were task-oriented
leadership, relation-oriented leadership, change-oriented
leadership, charismatic leadership, participative leadership,
ethical leadership, ethic-based contingent reward leadership
and autocratic leadership and employee motivation was the
dependent variable. These independent variables could explain
64.5 % of the variation within employee motivation. This result
implied a strong influence of leadership styles in retaining and
developing employee motivation. In addition, this research
indicated that charismatic leadership, relation-oriented
leadership, and ethic-based contingent reward leadership were
positively associated with employee motivation.
Index Terms—Auditing field in Ho Chi Minh City, auditors,
employee motivation, leadership styles, leadership behaviors.
I. INTRODUCTION
In today’s competitive workplace, managers should equip
themselves with leadership orientation and employee
behaviors knowledge because of some following reasons.
Doing business in a competitive environment, regardless of
the field of production or service, require leaders to have a
clear vision and direction to maintain and develop the
company. To reach business success, there are several key
factors such as: leadership skills, environment impacts and the
most important element are human resources.
According to [1], in the current business environment,
organizations in all industries are experiencing a rapid
change, which is accelerating at an enormous speed. Hence,
knowledge and understanding of inner strengths and
weakness of the people in the organization is very useful for
manager/company success. Human resources management
theories assert that employees are indeed valuable because
they will create values for firms. Thus, [2] said that business
has come to realize that the motivated, stable and numerable
workforce can deliver powerfully to the survival of company.
Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) is a young and dynamic
location that attracts various different types of business to
operate; and when economic-society reach a higher level in
development, the financial statements of businesses or
organizations must be transparent and must be audited by
auditing firms. In other words, all business must inform about
II. LITERATURE REVIEW
A. Employee motivation
Nowadays, employee motivation is considered as one of
the most vital parts in reaching the success and prosperity of
business in such a dynamic and fierce market competition.
According to [4], employee motivation is a set of energetic
forces, including internal factors of each individual as well as
external factors, for example, job characteristics, individual
differences and organizational practices. In other words,
employee motivation should be a complete combination of
employee’s needs and expectations that created from work,
and the workplace factors that enable employee motivation.
Satisfying those factors to increase employee motivation is
absolutely a huge challenge for every employer. As a result,
each leader/manager has to understand his or her employees’
requirements, needs, or expectations and generate a suitable
work environment to motivate employees [5]. Nevertheless,
within all the functions a leader performs, motivating
Manuscript received April 29, 2015; revised August 21, 2015.
M. N. Khuong and D. T. Hoang are with the School of Business,
International
University,
VNU-HCM,
Vietnam
(e-mail:
[email protected], [email protected]).
DOI: 10.7763/IJTEF.2015.V6.471
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International Journal of Trade, Economics and Finance, Vol. 6, No. 4, August 2015
employees is assumed as the most complex task. This is
because in the workplace what motivates employees, changes
constantly [6].
According to [7], key factors contributing to employee
motivation are employees’ needs, working environment,
responsibilities, supervision, fairness and equity, effort,
employee´s development and feedback and rewarding. [5]
said that encouraging employees for achieving their goals is
important in creating an enjoyable work environment.
Appreciation goes with positive feedback; verbal praise can
improve remarkably employee motivation. In addition,
employees should be invited to share their experiences in, and
co-workers’ contributions toward, accomplishing the goals.
About work environment and tasks, [7] suggested workplace,
which brings productive, respectful, provides a feeling of
inclusiveness and offers a friendly atmosphere should be
established. [7] also suggested that rewards lead to higher
level of motivation as well as performance. To influencing
individual or group behaviors, rewards are management tools
that contribute positively to firm’s effectiveness. Common
types of rewards are used by most of businesses, namely:
payment, promotion, bonuses to motivate and encourage
high-level performances of employees [8]. Nonetheless, the
degree of employee motivation does not depend totally on
money incentive; instead, there are many ways (as mentioned
above) of increasing employees work motivation [9].
relations oriented behaviors, which involve establishing an
effective leadership style, including: a) Team building, b)
consulting and delegating, c) Supporting, d) Developing, e)
Recognizing. [22] proved that this leadership behavior would
reduce employee turnover; moreover, [23] reported “the
leadership behaviors of individualized support and
intellectual stimulation resulted in higher levels of employee
motivation”.
D. Change Oriented Leadership
Change-oriented Leadership is defined as ability to get
familiar with changes, making changes, and finding
persuasive communications/methods to talk people about the
change. Change oriented leadership behavior is primarily
concerned with improving strategic decisions; adapting to
change in the environment; increasing flexibility and
innovation; making major changes in processes, products, or
services; and gaining commitment to the changes [14].
Besides, a change- oriented leader has to understand the
impacts of environment and find the creative/innovative ways
regarding to strategies, products, manufacture to conform to
the environment changes. Change oriented leadership
requires a complete combination between integrating
environmental inputs and variations in individual style.
Meanwhile, change oriented leadership behavioral roles fall
in four categories: (a) giving/seeking, (b) making decisions,
(c) building relationships, and (d) influencing [24]. Change
oriented behaviors are so helpful that gain significantly
support from other followers as long as a leader has a high
tolerance for risk, and ensure resistance to change does not
stifle innovation. Importantly, [25] found significant positive
correlations between change-oriented leadership style and
employee motivation, organizational commitment, and
evaluations of the leader's competence.
B. Task Oriented Leadership
Task oriented leadership is defined as the degree to which a
leader set their followers roles, focuses on goal achievement,
and establishes well-defined patterns of communication [10].
To put it more clearly, task oriented leadership will force their
followers engage in top-down communication, explain what
the follower is to do, as well as when, where, and how each
function is accomplished. A task oriented leader focuses on
providing structure to his employees and encourages them to
complete their tasks at the first point [11]-[13]. In the
provided structure, employees follow rules and procedures as
established by the leader- resulting in strict guidance.
In recent years, The University of Michigan studies level of
effectiveness of task oriented behaviors [14] involved
“placing emphasis on planning, coordinating, and providing
the resources needed by followers, including establishing
goal-setting objectives for the followers”. According to [15],
the task-oriented leadership method is understood as
problems focused, and change the situation positively by
direct actions as well as reduce the amount of stress can be
triggered; improve employee passion and high motivation to
the job. Furthermore, task oriented strategies are parallel with
better adjustment; produce more effectiveness and less
depression [16], [17].
E. Participative Leadership
Participative leadership is well defined as producing
decision making through motivating and encouraging
employees join in making important decisions or at least all of
those employees will share influence in decision- making [26]
Participative Leadership involved “managing the group
meetings, influencing commitment and conformity, and
assisting in conflict and communication issues”. [14].
According to [27] "motivated employees usually believe that
they are doing something worthwhile" and they believe that
their participation is valued (group members depend on them
and listen to their ideas). Thus, participative leadership style
focuses on the intrinsic motivation of followers by enriching
subordinates jobs through autonomy, variety and
empowerment. Moreover, when employees participate in
democratic decision making, they realize that their ideas are
respected and considered by higher supervisors; they feel
connected with the organization as if they are important parts
in the company and try to reach maximum performance [27].
When implement Participative decision-making strategies
in the workplace scenario, huge benefits offered for both
leaders and employees: Increase employee's motivation [28];
Increase the level of innovation in the organizations [29];
Increase the quality of the decision [30]; Contribute to the
quality of employee's work life [29]; Increase employees’
motivation [31]; Increase the level of employee's commitment
C. Relation Oriented Leadership
Relation oriented leadership illustrates the degree to which
a leader show his attention and respect for their followers,
looks out for their welfare, and expresses appreciation and
support [18], [19]. Relation oriented leadership can create a
stronger effect on employee motivation (both from job and
leader motivation), comparing to task oriented leadership,
which possesses a slightly stronger effect on leader
performance. according to [20], [21], there are five specific
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[32].
characteristics of transactional leadership include
responsibility, fairness, honesty, and promise keeping. Hence,
in transactional leadership “followers are motivated by
leaders' promises, praises, and rewards or they are corrected
by negative feedback, reproof, threats, or disciplinary
actions” [40]. In transactional leadership, the ethical and
moral legitimacy are described as “depends on (leaders)
granting the same liberty’s and opportunity’s to others that
one claims for oneself, on telling the truth, keeping promises,
distributing to each what is due, and employing valid
incentives or sanctions” [40]. To be more specific, the moral
legitimacy of transactional leadership requires fairness; and in
terms of the components of transactional leadership,
contingent reward leadership illustrates the relationship
between finish certain tasks/behaviors by the followers and
receive rewards from leaders. Similarly, active management
implies that the leader will implement punishment if followers
fail to demonstrate required behaviors or complete certain
tasks. Those components clearly explain “a form transactional
leadership consistent with the underlying assumptions of a
justice approach, namely separation, autonomy, and
principles of fairness in exchange” [41].
Regarding to the above literature review, this study
hypothesized that:
H1: Task oriented leadership positively affects employee
motivation.
H2: Relation-oriented leadership positively affects
employee motivation.
H3: Change-oriented leadership affects employee
motivation
H4: Participative leadership positively affects employee
motivation.
H5: Charismatic leadership positively affects employee
motivation.
H6: Autocratic leadership negatively affects employee
motivation.
H7: Ethical leadership positively affects employee
motivation.
H8: Ethic based contingent reward leadership positively
affects employee motivation.
F. Charismatic Leadership
In term of charismatic leadership, a leader makes his/her
followers believe that their leader has extraordinary
leadership abilities. To be more specific, those leaders are
“exceptionally expressive people, who employ rhetoric to
persuade, influence and mobilize others” [33]. Charismatic
leaders will have several common characteristics, clearly:
they have vision and articulation, they are sensitive to their
followers, they are willing to take risks, and they show
unconventional behavior [34].
G. Autocratic Leadership
Autocratic leadership is demonstrated as a controlling,
directive, or coercive leader, who seldom takes decisions
basing on input from their subordinates [18]. Similarly, [35]
described autocratic leadership, “which is based on personal
dominance and authoritarian behavior that serves the
self-interest of the leader, is self-aggrandizing and
exploitative of others”. “Autocratic leaders are domineering,
controlling, and vengeful” [36]. An autocratic leader takes
over the control in his/her office by dominating all the
decisions and actions, giving clear/detail instruction and
direction to the followers, force them what to do and how to
carry out a task; all those mentioned actions will prevent
employees from creativity and innovativeness. With
subordinates, the leader communicates formally and in
written form. The autocratic leadership style can be
considered as a structure of pyramid in which a leader
possesses the highest position on the top and the lowest
position is for employees.
H. Ethical Leadership
Ref. [37] had defined ethical leadership as “the
demonstration of normatively appropriate conduct through
personal actions and interpersonal relationships, and the
promotion of such conduct to followers through two ways
communication, reinforcement, and decision making”. As
being an ethical leadership, [37] stated typical characteristics
of ethical leaders including honest, trustworthy, fair and
caring; transparent and engage in open communication,
promoting and rewarding ethical conduct among followers.
Such leaders make principled and fair choices and structure
work environments justly.
To make people believe one leader behave ethically, [38]
mentioned that a leader have to behavior virtuously to bring
benefits for majority; protect him from doing evil acts or
harmful impacts on others. The need for increased attention
for integrity, a positive moral perspective, and ethical conduct
in the leadership literature is also echoed in the recently
developing stream of research on positive organizational
operation, in work on spiritual leadership [39]
III. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
A. Questionnaire Design and Data Collection
With the aim of analyzing numerical data to exploring the
effects of leadership styles on employee motivation, the
quantitative approach was reasonably adopted. Also, because
the objective of this research was finding the important
leadership styles that impacted on employee motivation in the
auditing companies, so the sample size must be larger to
guarantee the representation of this research. Therefore, 320
questionnaire copies were conveniently and directly sent to
auditors in Ho Chi Minh City.
Questionnaire design: A structured questionnaire was
designed basing on the main concepts as well as important
variables which were drawn from literature in the field of
organizational behavior and leadership. The questionnaire
was translated into Vietnamese and tested through a pilot
study of 30 auditors (n=30) before officially sending to the
I. Ethic Based Contingent Reward Leadership
According to [33], contingent reward leadership is one of
three facets of transactional leadership, 2 other facets
including active management by exception, and passive
management by exception. Hence, in the scope of the
research, ethic based contingent reward leadership will be
considered under ethics of transactional leadership. Main
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component was at 2.640 satisfying the requirements of being
greater than 1 and the total variance explained was 52.8% of
the total variance. In addition, the high value of Cronbach’s
Alpha of .776 indicated good reliability of the measurement
scale for assessing the dependent variable.
Regarding independent variables in Table II, the KMO
index was at .906 > .05 and the Sig. of Bartlett’s test was at
.000 < .05 inferring that the data of independent variables was
appropriate for factor analysis. Eight components were
extracted corresponding to the concepts of charismatic
leadership, change oriented leadership, autocratic leadership,
relation oriented leadership, ethical leadership, ethic based
contingent reward leadership, and participative leadership in
the research model. The Eigenvalues of all extracted
components were greater than 1 and the total variance
explained was 61.4 % of the total variance. In addition, the
values of Cronbach’s Alpha of all factors ranging from .711 .908 implying the high reliability of the measurement scale for
assessing the independent variables.
target respondents (n=320). The questionnaire was
conveniently and directly sent to auditors working in Ho Chi
Minh City. Most of the questions in the questionnaire used the
five point Likert scale which was equivalent to “1 = strongly
disagree”, “2 = disagree”, “3 = neutral”, “4 = agree”, and “5 =
strongly agree”.
B. Factor Analysis and Reliability
By applying Principle component analysis and Varimax
rotation, all observed variables in the measurement scale were
tested through two exploratory factor analyses (EFA) to
discover their structure and convergence in the model. The
first exploratory factor analysis was applied for the dependent
variable, including nine items, and the other EFA was for the
group of independent variables, including 50 items.
TABLE I: SUMMARY OF THE DEPENDENT VARIABLE
Given names
Number of Cronbach’s
items
alpha
Employee motivation (EMOTIVA)
5*
.776
* All items have factor loadings ≥ 0.5
KMO index = .826 and Sig. of Bartlett’s test = .000
Total variance explained = 52.8%
IV. RESEARCH FINDING
TABLE II: SUMMARY OF THE INDEPENDENT VARIABLES
Given names
Number Cronbach’s
of items
alpha
Charismatic Leadership (CHARILEAD)
8*
.896
Change-oriented Leadership (CHANORLE)
7*
.908
Autocratic Leadership (AUTOLEAD)
7*
.875
Relation-oriented Leadership (RELORLE)
6*
.882
Ethical Leadership (ETLEAD)
6*
.856
Task- oriented relationship (TASKORLE)
6*
.714
Ethic contingent reward Leadership (ETCORELE)
3*
.813
Participative Leadership (PARTLEAD)
3*
.711
* All items have factor loadings ≥ 0.5
KMO index = .906 and Sig. of Bartlett’s test = .000
Total variance explained = 61.4%
A. Sample Descriptions
Job position
80
Middle manager
15
4.7
Gender
Male
168
52.5
Marital status
Female
Single
152
225
47.5
70.3
Married
18 - 25
25 - 35
35 - 45
Less than 1 year
1 - 4 years
4 - 7 years
7 - 10 years
Over 10 years
Vocational School
95
39
129
83
8
31
102
124
55
2
29.7
12.2
40.3
25.9
2.5
9.7
31.9
38.8
17.2
.6
College
University
Post University
209
95
14
65.3
29.7
4.4
Seniority
Education
attainment
TABLE IV: CORRELATIONS BETWEEN VARIABLES
1
2
3
4
5
EMO
TIVA
1. CHARILEAD
.661*
1.00
2. CHANORLE
.592*
.579* 1.00
3. AUTOLEAD
.212*
.92* .132* 1.00
4. RELORLE
.664*
.627* .589* .152* 1.00
5. ETLEAD
.608*
.552* .601* .083* .640 1.00
6. TASKORLE
.211*
.056* -.067* .004* .089* .074*
7. ETCORELE
.632*
.591* .593* .018* .564* .518*
8. PARLEAD
.542*
.508* .443* .133* .489* .536*
Mean
3.55
3.58 3.69 2.53 3.65 3.56
SD
.400
.443 .470 .467 .474 .448
*.Correlation is significant at the .005 level
Table III presented the characteristics of the respondents
participating in this study. As can be seen from the table, the
number of male and female respondents was nearly equal, and
the majority of the respondents was staff (70.3%) and
Percent
70.3
Low manager
Age
As illustrated in the Table I, for the dependent variable, the
KMO index was at .826 > .05 and the Sig. of Bartlett’s test
was at .000 < .05, this revealed that the data of dependent
variable was appropriate for factor analysis. There was one
component extracted which corresponded to the concept of
employee motivation. Five out of nine items had high factor
loadings which were greater than .05 reflecting the high
correlation between each item and the corresponding
extracted component. The Eigenvalues of the extracted
TABLE III: PROFILE OF RESPONDENTS
Frequency
Staff
225
6
7
1.00
.440*
.029*
3.77
.4696
1.00
.467*
3.68
.5024
25.0
followed by low manager and middle manager with 25%,
4.7% respectively. Moreover, most of the employees
participating in answering the questionnaire were experienced
with 7-10 years of working (accounting for 38.8% the total) in
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the observed organization; most of them graduated from
college (65.3%). Besides, there were 225 respondents were
single and the age from 25-35 took the largest quantity in 320
respondents
via values and personality of one leader. Besides, the authors
mentioned that when a leader can attract many followers
attention, those people will have strong motivation in job, and
they are able to perform well under the supervision of that
leader, and have more positive work attitudes. Briefly, the
great contribution of charismatic leadership in employee
motivation is reasonable. Thus, a leader in auditing field
should consider following suggestions to boost charismatic
leadership impacts on employee motivation. Firstly, “build a
foundation for charisma”, each leader must first possess a
high degree of self-confidence, which is very necessary
foundation to achieve effectively every other factors in
leadership charisma. Next, “create goals for job”, defining
goals is important for the sake of clarity. Losing sight of
vision is easy, so establish clear reachable goals will serve to
renew visions when some problems get tough. Then,
“communication”, charisma is all about communication
one-on-one, or in small groups with team members, so a
leader should get those staff together to discuss
interdependencies and project goals. To foster the charismatic
appeal in other members’ eyes, a leader should build a two
way bond that every member will involve and let them know
that any their achievements will be recognized and
congratulated via frequent feedbacks and reviews.
Next, ethic based contingent reward leadership was the
second influential factor (β = .191) which has a relative strong
impact on the level of employee motivation. Under ethic
based contingent reward leadership, leaders adopt a
consultative style for making decisions, consult individual
followers to different degrees, and the leader decide the final
decisions. Besides, a close relationship between a leader and
his staff is constructed and motivated through the rewards,
agreements, and expectations negotiated with the leader [43].
Hence, to improve this leadership style, it is advisable for a
leader to do subsequent ways. First, leaders should have clear
goals to achieve targets, and provide explicit guidance to
other members regarding what they expect from
organizational members and how they will be rewarded for
their efforts and commitment. Besides, during the process,
leader should establish a clear constructive feedback on
performance in order to increase the efficiency of established
routines and procedures that will help the organization
become efficient and productive. Lastly, respond to
deviations from expected outcomes and identify corrective
actions to improve performance is also important for leader.
Relation oriented leadership with β = .174 will be discussed
because of it moderate influence on employee motivation. In
term of this leadership style, employees have many
opportunities to involve in skills building and fostering
mutually cooperative relations lead to higher employees
motivation and higher performance; in turn a leader giving
praise for work accomplishments, show appreciation to
subordinates for their contributions and achievements [44].
Thus, employees will be motivated highly in the “relation
oriented leadership” environment. It is advisable for leaders
to follow those steps to improve employee motivation. First,
to stimulate employees, aparting from achieving goals and
targets, a leader who applies relation oriented leadership also
pays attention to create a positive relationship with his
subordinates as well as bring friendly atmospheres that make
B. Factors Correlating with Employee Motivation
As shown in Table IV, there are positive correlations
between all leadership behaviors and EMOTIVA: REORLE
(r = .664), CHARILEAD (r = .661), ETCORELE (r = .632),
ETLEAD (r = .608), CHANORLE (r = .592), PARLEAD (r =
.542), AUTOLEAD (r = .212), and TASKORLE (r = .211).
This means that better use of relation-oriented leadership,
charismatic leadership, ethic-based contingent reward
leadership, ethical leadership, change-oriented leadership,
participative leadership, autocratic leadership, and
task-oriented leadership behaviors would lead to higher
employees’ motivation.
C. Factors Affecting on Employee Motivation
TABLE V: COEFFICIENTS BETWEEN DEPENDENT VARIABLE AND
INDEPENDENT VARIABLES
Variables
Standardized
Sig.
Correlation
Coefficients (Beta)
(Part)
.661
.000
.222*
CHARILEAD
.592
.081
.084*
CHANORLE
.212
.000
.122*
AUTOLEAD
.664
.001
.174*
RELORLE
.608
.001
.169*
ETLEAD
.211
.000
.170*
TASKORLE
.632
.000
.191*
ETCORELE
.542
.013
.105*
PARLEAD
*Coefficient is significant at the .05
Dependent Variable: EMOTIVA
Predictors: CHARILEAD, CHANORLE, AUTLEAD, RELORLE,
ETLEAD, TASKORLE, ETCORELE, PARLEAD
ANOVA: F = 75.503, Sig. = .000
Model summary: Adjusted R Square = .645
As indicated in the table V above, except CHANORLE had
Sig. of p = .081 > .05, the rest independent variables
significantly contributed in predicting EMOTIVA. This
means that every 1-standard deviation increase in
CHARILEAD, or AUTOLEAD, or RELORLE, or ETLEAD,
TASKORLE, or ETCORELE, or PARLEAD would lead to
an increase in EMOTIVA of .222, or .122, or .174, or .169, or
.170, or .191, or .105, respectively when other leadership
behaviors were controlled for. Thus, hypothesis H3 was
rejected and other hypotheses including H1, H2, H4, H5, H6,
H7, H8 were supported by the data at 95% level of confidence.
The regression equation illustrated the effects of leadership
behaviors/styles on employee motivation using the
standardized coefficients beta (β) as followed:
EMOTIVA = .222 CHARILEAD +.122 AUTOLEAD +
.174 RELORLE + .169 ETLEAD + .170
TASKORLE + .191 ETCORELE + .105
PARLEAD
V. DISCUSSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
With the highest value of Beta (β = .222), the charismatic
leadership was the most influential factor which had the
strongest positive impact on the level of employee motivation.
According to [42], the significant correlation between
followers’ preferences for leadership styles can be predicted
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employees feel comfortable and easy to speak out their
thought. Besides, welfare, caring, encouraging, motivating,
developing, and supporting of each individual receives high
priority from a leader.
Other leadership behaviors, including task-oriented
leadership, ethical leadership, autocratic leadership, and
participative leadership with β = .170, .169, .122 and .105
respectively, will be discussed in term of methods to improve
employee motivation.
About task-oriented leadership, it is completely different
with relation-oriented leadership. Task-oriented leadership
means a leader emphasize strongly on competing task and
deadlines. He tends to establish clearly defined schedules,
task assignments and deadlines through a structured
workplace, in which he requires all tasks that have to be done
perfectly. Moreover, a leader will give more suggestions, and
takes the high control in workplace to make sure everything
run smoothly. His focus is always the task and because of this
attitude, task-oriented leadership can be confused with
autocratic leadership [45]. The approach is, however, much
different, a leader sees potential development of his team as a
part of the task whereas, the autocratic leadership look at
himself before others and that includes even his team. Due to
those specific characteristics of task-oriented leadership,
there are some relevant suggestions for a leader to apply and
motivate his employees. First, as mentioned before,
Task-oriented leaders have a strong orientation for getting the
job done and on time. Clearly, a leader should set out work
schedules with requirements and deadlines that will be easy
for all his staff to follow. Besides, within “task oriented
leadership” environment, a leader should pay much attention
to follow all tasks to measure the progress. In addition,
task-oriented leadership works especially well in
environments where job responsibilities are more easily
defined and predictable. Next, establishing and maintaining a
high standard for performance is necessary. A leader shows
his expectancies to employees, which he requires the desired
results in the strict schedules and brings efficiency in
production. Finally, a leader will be not only control his
employees’ performance, but he also should know what is
going on and stay in touch with the company, clients,
suppliers, etc., information. If a leader runs a section without
ideas of what is happening in other sections or the direction
the company is headed, then he cannot keep pace with other
leaders’ achievements.
Regarding to ethical leadership, [46] proposed that ethical
leadership based on elements involving effective social
learning, which mean leaders influence followers’ ethical
conduct through role modeling. Besides, the more moral
leaders are in their business dealings, the more handshakes
from employees a leader can have, the more the wheels of
capitalism work better because of trust in the marketplace.
Business ethics bring benefits for both sides.” [47]. Hence,
there are some concrete steps about how best to develop
ethical leaders and stimulate employees effectively. Frist of
all, a leader should create a trust environment with employees
where they feel free to discuss ethical dilemmas and issues
with their leader. Second, a leader can establish a shared
ethical vision with other group members form various levels
of the team and build a "Code of Conduct" that will spread out
the ethical vision of the organization to staff. Next, a leader
should ensure that established vision and code is
communicated to everyone within the organization, which can
be controlled through, for example, policy manuals, training
events, one-on-one and team coaching, newsletters, team
meetings, etc.. Besides, communication channel program
between a leader and his staff is another important success
suggestion. Within the channel program, employees will
communicate easily their concerns back to management in a
safe and confidential manner. Lastly, a leader should be an
ethical pioneer that means he will be a first person raising
voice to against unethical behavior, all violators of ethical
standards must be punished equally and justly throughout the
organization.
About autocratic leadership situation, we should recognize
and have a suitable interpretation. As mentioned in the H6 as
“autocratic leadership negatively affect employee
motivation”, but in the reality, autocratic leadership positively
affected employee motivation with (β = .122, p = .000), so H6
was not supported. However, this result still can be accepted
and explained well in the exceptional situation that requires
urgently completed tasks without considering staff opinions;
or when decisions need to be made quickly and some projects
require strong leadership to get things accomplished briskly
and efficiently. Hence, in the scope of this research, it can be
inferred that in 320 auditors we survey, there are some
auditors have to complete urgent tasks without too much
discussion with their leaders. Because of relevant literature
review, this result supported the arguments made by Delia,
Novi and Serbia (2013) [48].
Lastly, participative leadership is defined as a mastermaster relationship with group members in whom a leader
will develop his leadership abilities by consulting and
encouraging employees’ participation in decision-making. A
leader focused highly on group participation, discussion, and
group decisions [49]. Besides, because of participative
leadership impacts on employees’ motivation, a leader can
follow some suggestions to make sure that everybody has a
say and that decisions are made as well as gain more benefits
from this leadership style. First of all, a leader should create
and improve the morale of a workplace that help employees
feel engaged with the company whenever they contribute
ideas, or business decisions, activities. When employees feel
like their role is less submissive and restricted, they have less
of a tendency to withdraw and more focus on task completion.
In addition, they are more opened to share views, discuss
perspectives on those ideas freely before making decisions.
Moreover, they have the sense that they are also key
stakeholders in the evolution of the department or company.
Besides, innovative contributions relate to ideas, actions,
products, etc., of employees should be recognized quickly and
let those employees realize that their ideas and feedback are
not only appreciated, but also often put into action; and in
turn, they receive reward.
VI. CONCLUSIONS
All the research objectives have been fully achieved.
Firstly, the study has determined completely eight suitable
leadership styles that have potential impacts on employee
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the relationship between leadership styles and employee
motivation is found out successfully. Finally, to promote the
high level of employee motivation at workplace (auditing
field), the research findings and the study also have provided
the directions for leaders to manipulate their leadership styles.
The study has both theoretical and practical contributions
to the fields of leadership styles and employee motivation.
The Results from the study emphasize that compensations,
fringe benefits/rewards can be important elements, but
characteristics/personalities of a leader is the most decisive
factor that creates an effective motivational work
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There is a possibility that the results were biased against the
auditors working in Ho Chi Minh City. Therefore, it is
recommended to conduct further studies with other auditors in
different areas to test the generalizability of leadership styles
and employee motivation.
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development management at School of Public Administration of the
National Institute of Development Administration (NIDA), Bangkok,
Thailand.
Dang Thuy Hoang is a research assistant of School of
Business Administration, International University,
Vietnam National University, Ho Chi Minh. She has a
bachelor degree in business administration at
International University, Vietnam National University,
Ho Chi Minh. She is specialized in international
business management and interested in international
marketing, import-export management and strategic
management. In fall semester of 2015, she attends the courses of master of
science in leadership provided by The Twinning Program between
International University (IU) and Northeastern University (NU).
Mai Ngoc Khuong is a lecturer and researcher of
School of Business Administration, International
University, Vietnam National University, Ho Chi Minh
City. He has a bachelor degree in tourism and
hospitality management, a master of science degree in
leisure, tourism and environment at Wageningen
University, The Netherlands, and a PhD degree in
217